DVD of The Week: The 4400 - Season Three (2007)

"The war for the future will be fought in the past."

After two solid seasons - with only one really dud episode in the whole run - the third year of The 4400 is when the show really breaks out and starts to establish its own identity. It's been a slow burn, but as the battle lines are drawn in the increasingly X-Men-like between the agents of the various 'future factions', the standard of script writing has risen to a new level.

For the most part the cliched "freak-of-the-week" format has been abandoned in favour of the main through-story, allowing more interesting sub-plots to be woven around the central characters. Even the two government agents - Tom and Diana - are allowed to become more than plot facilitators and develop in their own right.

The show, as it evolves closer to a true ensemble piece, is also quite capable of not only tugging on the heartstrings, but producing its own fair share of "what the hell...?" moments, such as the particularly creepy two-parter Gone, which could so easily have been another Life Interrupted, but tackled its core concepts with more subtlety and imagination, while marking a major shift in the overall plot direction.

After the shocking revelations at the end of the last season, this year sees the resurrection of a major 4400 (the initials should have given away his messianic future - I can't believe I missed that clue), while Shawn shifts more to a John The Baptist role, the newly grown-up Isabelle turns into a fearful superbeing, and Matthew completes the Biblical allegory by playing the snake in the 4400's Garden of Eden - corrupting the innocent and sowing the seeds of future dissent.

Children turn into forces of evil while those we may have perceived as "baddies" seem to be forces for good; and as the series draws to a close we can finally see the writers' long term plans fall into place, suggesting a masterplan for the series of a calibre usually reserved for such instant modern classics as Lost, Heroes and Battlestar Galactica.

I know I keep harping on about what The 4400 is not and what it could be, but I really believe that had the creators pushed the envelope just that bit more from day one, instead of trying to ape the X-Files model of centering the action around the two contrasting agents (which was already old hat even then), Heroes would now be known by the lazy media (including myself) as "the new 4400".

Instead we get a show that, especially for people coming to it late, makes viewers constantly remark: "You know, this reminds me of Heroes to some degree."

Nevertheless, The 4400 is clearly getting enough of an audience to earn itself a fourth season while other lesser - but higher profile - programmes fall by the wayside. Long may it continue (as long as there are original, interesting stories to tell and the writing stays this good!)